Leading South Korean Bank Toss Taps Solana to Test Cross-Border Remittances for 15 Million Customers

South Korea’s Toss Bank, the country’s third-largest internet-only bank, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Solana Foundation to test blockchain-based remittance and settlement infrastructure. The agreement, announced on June 19, is the first direct strategic cooperation between a South Korean internet bank and the Solana Foundation.

The partnership will begin with a proof of concept for stablecoin-powered overseas transfers before any wider rollout. Toss will handle the banking service and user-experience side, while the Solana Foundation provides the underlying blockchain infrastructure for settlement. Stablecoins, which are dollar- or currency-pegged tokens, have increasingly displaced traditional wire transfers due to their ability to settle in seconds rather than days and reduce correspondent-banking fees.

The MOU is non-binding but signals that Toss Bank sees public blockchains as a credible rail for moving money across borders. If successful, the trial could eventually give the bank’s roughly 15 million customers faster and cheaper cross-border transactions.

The deal deepens Solana’s institutional push this year. In April, Shinhan Card, South Korea’s largest credit card issuer, partnered with the Solana Foundation to pilot a stablecoin payment program. Remittance giant Western Union also released a Solana-based stablecoin, USDPT, last month. These moves position Solana as a settlement layer for mainstream finance.

The first phase of the trial will examine whether stablecoin transfers on Solana can integrate into existing remittance workflows while meeting compliance, settlement, and consumer-protection requirements. Cross-border remittances remain slow and costly, often taking days and incurring several percentage points in fees. South Korea has become a hotspot for experiments aimed at modernizing these rails.

For Toss, the appeal is a faster, cheaper transfer product that could strengthen its customer base. If the proof of concept passes technical and regulatory tests, the bank could move toward a live remittance product built on the network, joining other financial institutions tokenizing payments.

Backers argue that Solana’s low fees and high throughput suit high-volume payment flows, though critics note past outages have raised reliability questions for mission-critical banking infrastructure. The MOU marks an intention rather than a finished service, but it adds another well-known name to the list of banks betting on blockchain for cross-border money movement.

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/toss-bank-solana-foundation-remittances-stablecoin/